If you are in the design world, then you may already know that San Francisco Decorator Showcase is currently up until May 27. Decorator Showcase began in 1977, and is a space for Bay Area interior designers to show off their skills and creativity all in one location. It takes place in a historic San Francisco home and each designer is assigned a room, anything from a bedroom to a hall closet, to transform.
This year we had the pleasure of working with Jonathan Rachman, among others, on a custom grille for his exquisite Houghton Hall-inspired living room at Showcase. The inspiration for this grille was the elegant de Gournay wallpaper laden with birds and romantic vines. We’ve never done birds in metal before so this was a fun design challenge! As always, we began this process with a storyboard. Jonathan made it easy to get our creative juices flowing by sharing his photos and ideas with us. We expanded on that by adding our own inspiration photos to the board to help us formulate our ideas. Annie began sketching…in the studio, out of the studio, even on airplanes! Jonathan was a pleasure to work with and provided such great, honest, and productive feedback, making this collaborative design process a breeze!
Once the design was finalized (more birds please) we submitted the final, selected sketch to our CAD department, and just like that the sketch went from paper to metal! This grille was especially enjoyable to make, because it so clearly shows Jonathan’s talent for integrating a stunning design detail to his spectacular space.
If you have the opportunity to check out Decorator Showcase this year, I highly recommend it! You can catch custom AJK Design Studio grilles in both Jonathan Rachman and Deniece Duscheone’s rooms! They are showing their work alongside many other talented designers, a showcase of design and art in the bay area that you won’t want to miss!
Special thanks to Jonathan and his team for providing the photo above!
